Crikey. The original was the first film I ever saw in a theater. I was not quite 3 years old. My mother said we actually sat through the film twice.
I imagine a large part of that fact is due to an air conditioned movie theater vs. a non-AC apartment in the NYC summer.
In fact we used to spend a lot of weekends seeing 2 movies a day just to escape the heat. The original Star Wars, Orca the killer whale, and The Rescuers being another memorable day.
As much nostalgia and love I have for both the book and the original film, Depp is nearly in a class by himself these days, should be worth the price of admission.
One of the things I always liked about Dahl was the darkness he let into his tales. The premises of his stories were often intended for children, but he didn’t put them outside of the real world, outside of adult fears and realities.
His short story The Swan, is still one of my most memorable visions of terror.
The main fear and reality seems to be sentencing the children in his stories to the same misery he experienced at boarding school. I think the main difference between Dahl and Orwell is that Dahl seems to reserve most of the cruelty and abuse for the children, while Orwell applied it to the entire world.
Which is why I find the fact that Dahl sent his own children to boarding school so astonishing. Maybe that’s just an Enlgish thing.
Was Burton specific about his objections to the first movie? I thought it was OK–true to the book in lots of small ways–and I still rate it as Gene Wilder’s last great performance in his “Young Frankenstein” mode.
I wish it hadn’t been a musical, though (and that the city in which it was set looked more like something from the English Midlands rather than Prague).
I don’t see why people would have concern due to Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes. He was very much confined by the setting and plot, and forced to leave out all the touches he would normally put on it. Wonka, on the other hand, more or less matches with him.
Well, I would agree that Willy Wonka is more suited to his sensibilities, and Johnny Depp always does excellent work with him, but to me Planet of the Apes–regardless of what the circumstances of him making it were–was just the latest in a series of movies by him in which Burton just had no grasp whatsoever of what the hell he was trying to do. Was it supposed to be “ironic”? Was it supposed to be scary? Was it its own movie, or just a postmodern footnote to the original for those of us superior enough to be living now rather than back in the “innocent” 60s-70s? I just found the whole thing…awful. And certainly as a director, Tim Burton had some control over matters of story/dialog/tone, whether it was a contractual obligation or not. I had the same feelings with Sleepy Hollow, too. Never did see Big Fish, though, I admit. Mainly because I was so turned off by POTA…
It gives away much more about the look and feel of the place, so don’t watch it if you, like me, tend to try and avoid the hype and spoilers that many trailers have nowadays.
Yeah, I just saw this trailer last night and had this reaction:
What. The FUCK. Is Johnny Depp DOING?
It starts off well: (swoosh swoosh) the film’s design looks amazing, (magical tinkling) Burton seems to be back on the right track, (strings swell!)…and then J.D. opens his mouth. What’s with the Michael Jackson imitation? Is he going for some kind of man-child sort of thing? He’s playing him like Willy Wonky.
Oh, and to add insult to injury: “Don’t touch that squirrel’s nuts!” THIS is the artistry of Tim Burton?
My trailer radar is right 90% of the time, and I’m getting strong readings of suckage from this one.
I admit it: I laughed out loud at the “Don’t touch that squirrel’s nuts!” part.
Depp seems to be taking the Wonka character in a bit of a different direction. Wilder was stand-offish and distant in a way that a lot of kids see adults, particularly strangers and authority figures. There was JUST the right amount of underlying menace and coldness in his portrayal so that it touched a chord with what we remember as a kid.
From what I see of the trailer, Depp is just going for the weird stranger-with-candy (heh) approach, mixed with a “ew, kids annoy me” attitude. I don’t think I’ll like it as much.
The style of the rest of the film looks great, though. I’ll definitely see it.
Gag. Never thought I’d say this, but Burton seems on the mark here, and Johnny Depp, typically the only good part of the movies Tim Burton makes, looks to be ruining it.
The “clever” thing about the golden goose in the original movie was being able to use the ‘good egg’/‘bad egg’ line… changing it to squirrels and saying ‘she was a bad nut’ just seems lame (based on the recent TV trailer).
The movie will potentially live and die based on:
the boat scene. Wilder was awesome here.
denying Charlie the prize. Good day, sir!
The oompa-loompas. Cheesy as the musical aspect was in the original, I’m sure most everyone remembers the oompa-loompa songs.
I’d prefer to see a Wonka more like Depp’s Jack Sparrow character. This Wonka just looks… feminine.
